Saturday, May 19, 2007

del.icio.us recipe of the week - vietnamese summer rolls

In April I mentioned here how much I love del.icio.us - a very cool site to bookmark websites and pages you want to see again. I think it's better than bookmarking them on my computer because by using del.icio.us I can access my bookmarks from any computer, anywhere. And this way I can mark recipes I find on the internet without having to print them off; using lots of ink and paper each time. And that is a good thing.

The bad thing? On May 16 my recipe count on del.icio.us hit 100. And that is not counting recipes that I've already tried and deleted. That is 100 new recipes waiting for me to try them, in addition to all my cookbooks at home, plus my 8 notebooks already full of recipes from my head, friends, magazines, books, and the internet. Plus all the recipes I come across each week from the links I regularly check out. OMG you guys!!!!! That's a lot of recipes.

So in the spirit of Weekend Cookbook Challenge (which, if you didn't know, is a monthly challenge to cook from never/seldom used books/magazines/whatever in your collection), each week (possibly) I will cook and tell you about a recipe I have bookmarked in my del.icio.us.

I remember the first salad roll I ever had - from Granville Island Market in Vancouver BC. It was huge and very tightly packed, something I can never achieve, with a straight row of shrimp running right down the center, the pinkness brightly visible through the rice wrapper. Ah memories.

Ruth's rolls have a few twists that set them apart from the more traditional rolls. There are no noodles, and the rolls are served with a tomato salsa full of Vietnamese seasonings - fish sauce, ginger, and cilantro are the 3 strongest. And mango? Yes please!

We used spinach in place of the lettuce for the filling, and Scott made some rolls with crab flavored pollock. I substituted a bit of soy sauce for the fish sauce in the salsa.

The salsa is outstanding - sweet and spicy. I've got some leftover in the fridge, but I don't think it will last long!

These are so fabulous. Mango yes please for sure.I haven't done this recipe exactly but something like them. I was surprized at how easy they were to do. But like you say I do have room to improve my wrapping skills. They are so good and they're fun to make.